“It took Mat awhile to get his feet on the ground,” the Padres manager said of his 23-year-old right-hander. “Early, he wasn’t consistent enough, he couldn’t get his secondary pitches in the strike zone.

“Later he threw the ball better. He got on a roll. Hey, he gave up three runs. That’s good enough to win a lot of games.”

And there’s the elephant in the closet.

Not if you’re a Padre. Three runs allowed is usually going to buy you a loss – which it did Sunday for the 18th time this season. That’s how many games the Padres have lost this season when Padres pitchers have allowed three or fewer runs.

Sunday afternoon the Padres lost 3-1 while getting only four hits – and only three in seven innings against a 22-year-old right-hander, Blake Beavan, who was making his major league debut.

Beavan had a 4.45 earned run average in the Pacific Coast League. In two starts against the Padres Triple-A team in Tucson, Beavan gave up 15 hits in 14 innings.

Sunday, Beavan raced through the Padres – following a formula worked to perfection by the Mariners against the Padres over their six-game, home-and-home interleague series.

The Padres lost five of the six games, the only win coming Saturday in a 1-0 game decided in part because home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi lost track of the pitch count leading to the “three-ball walk” to Cameron Maybin that resulted in the game’s lone run.

In six games against the Mariners, the Padres were:

--Out-scored 23-4. They were shut out twice and never scored more than a single run in any of the six games. The Padres scored single runs in four of the 54 innings with one of the runs being unearned.

--Held to a .161 batting average (30-for-186) against the Mariners with three extra-base hits, eight walks and two hit-by-pitchers (for a .204 on-base percentage) and 56 strikeouts (in 54 innings).

--Facing six different starting pitchers with the average game time of 2 ½ hours.

Black said he saw a common thread in the way the six starters approached the Padres.

“They had an upbeat tempo between pitches,” said Black. “All six threw strikes and had good location. They came at us with strikes.”

Why not? The Padres are back down to hitting .234 as a team and averaging 3.38 runs per game.

After showing some signs of life, the Padres are again last in the major leagues in runs scored, extra-base hits and slugging percentage and next-to-last in home runs and slugging percentage.

And today the Padres open a four-game series in San Francisco against a reigning World Series champion Giants team that has better pitching marks than the Mariners.

The Padres have 16 games remaining this season with the Giants – including eight of their next 11 games around the All-Star break.

Clearly, this is not the offense the Padres thought they assembled last spring.

“When you look at the names and history,” said Black, “I thought that as a group they’d come closer to what they had done in the past. That hasn’t happened consistently.

“Usually, to consistently sustain an offense, you need four or five swinging well and that’s happened only sporadically.”

It hasn’t even happened that often against the Mariners.

There was one piece of encouraging news for the Padres.

Right-handed starter Aaron Harang will start a rehab assignment with Single-A Lake Elsinore Monday night – his first game action since he went on the disabled list after his June 9 start due to a stress fracture of the third metatarsal bone in his right foot.

That sets the timetable for Harang to return to the rotation after the All-Star break.

But when he does, what starter leaves the rotation? Left-hander Cory Luebke has pitched 11 straight scoreless innings since moving into Harang’s slot.